Google's big Android chief Andy Rubin has given an interview to PC Magazine, in which he touches on some interesting topics. Sadly, PC Magazine didn't ask about the patent situation and why Google is seemingly letting its OEMs fend for themselves, but there's still a lot of other interesting stuff in there.

Seriously, although it has its merits, Android currently remains way too much of an iOS clone. We need more manufacturers innovating and bringing something new on the table. It's not hard : better notifications, better home screen, a less clunky interface to mobile multitasking than the current implementations... The options are many, it's only a matter of daring.

Way to quote someone out of context and then rant about the Big Brother. You are way off the mark... He is talking about the Android platform NOT Google's applications, that could be easily ripped out. The platform itself is fully open source, you or anyone with the expertise can examine, modify, enhance, change the code! In fact, this is exactly what's happening.

He is talking about the Android platform NOT Google's applications, that could be easily ripped out. The platform itself is fully open source, you or anyone with the expertise can examine, modify, enhance, change the code! In fact, this is exactly what's happening.

Yeah, but it's the Google apps that gives the most value to Android. For example, without Google Voice and the Maps application, I wouldn't have much use for Android.

As for its openness and the carriers/OEMs 'adding value', oh... they'll add value alright. But it'll be added value to their pocketbooks, and rarely for the consumer, just like PC OEMs loading down your machine with trialware and other such nonsense in order to increase their bottom line. When you have custom ROMs being released to remove all of the crap that people don't want from the stock OTA ROMs, something is wrong.

And then there's the issue with incompatibility - you take something like HTC Sense... oh, it's great and the widgets are beautiful and all that, and then you try and load Angry Birds (and a host of other apps) on your Droid Incredible and realize that it's FUBAR. Whatever safeguards Google has in place to make sure the same apps work across different phones is not doing the job. Fragmentation, fragmentation, fragmentation.

As for consumer choice, when was the last time somebody released a high-end 'vanilla' Android phone since the original Droid/Nexus One came out late last year? AFAIK, the only decent Android phone that wasn't locked down by the OEM was the Nexus One, and that never worked with Verizon, so it's irrelevant to me.